


"Yeah. I Got My Best Friend In Here."

by KHart



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: F/F, More characters and tags will be added as I continue this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-02 10:04:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11507139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KHart/pseuds/KHart
Summary: A collection of all of the Flaritza prompts that I receive on tumblr or here.Feel free to send me any whenever you think of something. This ship needs more fic, seriously.My tumblr is flairfatale if you want to send prompts there instead.





	1. First Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Flaritza first meeting."
> 
> This turned into a first meeting and then some. Sorry?? Hope you enjoy anyway!

Marisol is an inmate of Litchfield Penitentiary for a whole month before she ends up getting her bunking assignment.

She’s been staying in the temporary bunks, and she’s gotten used to the feel of things there; She kind of likes it there.

But in prison you can never get too comfortable, so then she’s being led to what they call “Spanish Harlem,” and she’s pointed to an area with two beds and told that that’s where her permanent residence is for the remainder of her stay at the facility.

It’s a little inconvenient after so long of one schedule, but it’s still simple enough, right?

Yeah, no, apparently not.

“Oh, you got Ramos as your bunkie, Gonzales?” a voice asks from behind her.

She turns, from where she had been preparing to make up her bed, to see the inmate she’s come to know as Ruiz leaning against the wall that separates their two areas.

She raises an eyebrow, glances over to the empty bed on her right, made up as if left for the day to come back to later, and then meets the older woman’s eyes again.

“Yeah, I guess,” she replies.

Ruiz chuckles lowly.

“Well, good luck,” she says then, a smirk on her lips. “She’s not the most friendly when it comes to, well, _anybody_.” The woman leans in a little more before lowering her voice. “Plus, she’s been in the SHU for the past five weeks for ‘disorderly conduct.’” Ruiz scoffs. “Which is bullshit. The truth is, she got some dirt on Pornstache, and he locked her up before she could blab about it.”

Marisol tries to hide the surprise on her face, the disgust that comes with such an abuse of power, but she doesn’t seem to very well, because Ruiz just takes one look at her facial expression before nodding with a hum of agreement.

“Yeah, it’s fucked up. Like on all types of levels.” Ruiz sighs. “When she gets out, she’s probably gonna be fucked up too, you know. The SHU ain’t no fucking joke. It does stuff to your mind, to be by yourself for so long. It ain’t right for humans to be isolated like you are when you’re in there.”

Marisol nods lightly.

She tries to swallow around the sudden lump in her throat, tries to hide the sudden shaking in her hands, as she begins to organize her stuff again.

She clears her throat.

“Why–um… Why are you telling me this?”

“‘Cause we look out for our own round here,” Ruiz answers simply. “And though you don’t know her, she’s part of your family now. Even if y’all come to hate each other, you’re family now. And family’s all we got in here. So, I’m just telling you, so you know how to go about things when she comes back.”

“And how am I supposed to go about things?”

Ruiz looks at her, appraising and pointed.

“Carefully.”

Marisol doesn’t find an answer fast enough, and so Ruiz just leaves with one last nod.

Marisol sighs.

Things can never be simple, can they?

—

Marisol meets Ramos a lot faster than she thought she would.

In fact, it’s only two days after her transfer into permanent bunking that she wakes up to see someone’s back facing her.

Well, more like, she sees someone’s shadowy figure facing the opposite direction, since the lights in the dorm are still off.

But either way, she blinks sluggishly at them, hoping to clear her vision enough for her to make out more distinct features and movements.

It doesn’t really work in time, because then the person, Ramos, she’s assuming, turns and catches sight of her.

Marisol can just make out the woman’s brown eyes in the darkness; She can just barely see the features of the woman’s face and how her long hair frames them.

She’s not sure if her sudden breathlessness is caused by the fact that she was caught or by something else entirely; She decides to pretend it’s the first one.

“What the fuck you staring at, flaca?”

Marisol shakes her head.

“Nothing,” she replies, her voice hoarse with sleep. She clears her throat lightly. “Nothing.”

“Alright, then. Keep your fucking ojos to yourself, perra.”

Ramos turns away then, and Marisol continues to watch her for a few more moments before shifting to lie on her back once more to stare up at the ceiling, which she seems to be doing a lot more these days.

—

Yeah, so, Ramos definitely hates her.

Or Marisol assumes her name is _Maritza_ , because she _might_ have _maybe_ happened to hear a conversation one day where some of the other inmates used it in reference to her bunkie; She might _also_ think that the name is pretty and somehow suiting of the other woman, but then she would digress from the main fact that Maritza _definitely and completely_ hates her with every fiber of her little being.

 _No_ , she doesn’t go out of her way to make Marisol’s life a living hell, or even a slight discomfort, but for the entirety of the two weeks that they’ve been actual bunkmates–i.e. sleeping in the same space–Maritza has spoken a total of three words to her; “Fuck off, puta.”

That’s it, the complete scope of their interaction, if you happen to exclude the giving–by Maritza–and receiving–by Marisol–of death glares.

So, yeah okay, maybe she doesn’t despise her _totally_ , just dislikes her strongly, but either way, Marisol tries to steer clear of the other woman; She gives her the space she thinks she needs, and Maritza seems to do the same.

She’s always gone before Marisol wakes up, and she’s never back before Marisol lies down for the night; The only time they really see each other is in passing at work and lunch.

Marisol isn’t even actually sure that Maritza sleeps to be honest, and if she were still being honest, she’d even admit that that worries her a bit.

Because, _of course_ , she’s heard about the SHU; Of course, she’s heard the stories of how it can drive a person mad, make them see things, hear things, feel things that no human should ever feel.

(And if the heavy-lidded eyes and sunken cheeks of Maritza are any indicator, Marisol would say she believes the stories one hundred percent.)

But the other woman shows no real _outward_ signs of _mental_ deterioration, except for the occasional franticness with which her gaze will jump around the walls and people as if waiting for something– _someone_ –to come out and get her, to take her back.

And Marisol _tries_ not to stare for too long when she notices it happening. She tries to ignore just _how much_ she notices the jerky way the other woman’s chest will begin to rise and fall. She tries to ignore the strange urge she feels to go over and comfort her, to grab onto her hand and tell her that it will be okay.

She tries to ignore the pang in her chest when she inevitably watches Maritza leave wherever they are at the time.

And she usually succeeds too. Usually, she’s able to look away, look down to her work or her food.

But on this day, she doesn’t seem to be able to.

Her gaze keeps flickering back to the doors that Maritza nearly sprinted through. Her fork keeps stabbing distastefully, disinterestedly, at her ‘salad,’ and she knows that she won’t find the will to eat it again.

She sighs heavily before standing to go throw the rest of the food away.

She thinks that only Gloria eyes her curiously as she follows the same path Maritza just took, but she doesn’t look back to know for sure.

She, instead, decides to head straight to the bunks; Better to start at the most obvious places, she guesses.

But she’s just rounding the corner that will lead her to her destination when she hears a sniffle, soft and slight, come from just a ways behind her.

She backtracks immediately, stares at the door to what appears to be a maintenance closet, and hesitates for just a few more seconds before allowing her hand to actually turn the handle and push the door inwards.

What she sees would break any good person’s heart–good in the sense of someone who lives in that morally gray area that most of the inmates of Litchfield exist within.

Because sitting in the corner, curled into herself, is a crying Maritza.

Her legs are pulled up to her chest, and her hands are trembling within the dark strands of her hair, and her breathing is ragged and rough and really, _really_ terrifying to hear–Especially when a sob somehow seems to snag itself in the back of her throat and cuts off her breathing altogether.

“Oh no.”

Marisol exhales shakily as she shuts the door behind her, as quietly as possible, and then she approaches the other woman as slowly as possible, so that she can crouch before her without startling her or making her state worsen.

She hesitates again, as she so often does these days, before gently–gently, gently, _gently_ –wrapping her fingers around Maritza’s wrists.

“Hey,” she says softly, soothingly. “Hey, Maritza, shh. It’s okay. You’re okay. Breathe. Look at me.”

Maritza’s dark eyes continue to dart around their surroundings unseeingly, and her lips continue to move with words that Marisol can’t hear.

“Maritza,” she tries again. “Maritza, you’re okay. You’re safe. Breathe.”

Maritza’s chest continues to heave with each new breath, and her grip on her hair continues to get stronger, and Marisol is genuinely worried that she’ll start to pull some of it out soon if she doesn’t figure out something to do.

So, she begins to run her thumbs gently across the warm skin on the insides of Maritza’s wrists.

“Okay,” she whispers, almost to herself. “Okay.”

She readjusts her position then, so that she’s sitting cross-legged in front of the other woman instead of crouching, and she scoots forward some so that maybe her presence can be the thing that grounds Maritza to reality.

Which seemed like a good idea until Marisol realizes that now their faces are so suddenly close that she can feel each of Maritza’s unsteady releases of air upon her lips.

The sensation is almost too distracting for her to handle in the moment.

So, she pulls back just a little, clears her throat, waits a few seconds, inhales just a tad shakily. Then, she starts singing: A soft, Spanish lullaby that her mother would sing to her when she was young and sick with the flu.

Her fingers continue to hold to Maritza’s wrists, a reassuring touch that’s never heavier than that of a fly’s landing, and her voice is quiet, almost too quiet to hear honestly, because the paranoia of them being found here is high.

Because she would hate for them to be found here, with Maritza in the state she’s in; They’d probably both get sent to the SHU for leaving mealtime early and being in inappropriate places one-on-one.

And she can’t let that happen. She can’t let Maritza go through that again, if the current situation is any reason at all.

So, she doesn’t stop singing.

She doesn’t stop singing, even as a minute, maybe two, passes, and then as she begins to feel her own panic start to rise–attempt to choke her up in her words.

_It’s not working. It’s not working. It’s not working._

It’s not working, and Marisol doesn’t know what she can do after this; She’s never had to help anyone out of a panic attack before, only herself, and so she’s completely out of her element, and she doesn’t know what to do, and it’s not like she can go get someone to help her because then–

Maritza's breathing suddenly changes pace.

Her chest shudders as that same sob finally releases her from its suffocating weight, she gasps for air but in a more controlled way, her head falls back against the corner of the walls.

A sigh escapes her lips as she breathes in deeply, less restricted.

Marisol watches as she lifts her head again; She watches as Maritza’s blinks for a few slow and blurry seconds before those dark eyes dilate, focus in on her.

Neat eyebrows knit deeply over confused irises.

“Gonzales?”

Marisol is suddenly _very_ sensitively aware of how close their proximity to one another is, and so she pulls away, drops her hands from around Maritza’s arms, reaches up to scratch at the back of her neck a little.

“I–uh… yeah.” She coughs lightly. “Look, we–uh… We don’t have to talk about this, you know, ever again. I know you don’t really particularly _like me_.” She swallows around the lump in her throat. “I just–I came to look for you when I saw you leave dinner, because I was worried, and then I found you, and you were having a panic attack, and I remember when I used to have them too, so I wanted to help, but I–yeah… I mean, I guess that’s it.”

Her gaze flickers to everything but Maritza during the entirety of her rambling, and, once she’s finished, it lands on where her hands are clasped together in her lap; Her fingers fidget lightly.

A silence settles upon them heavily, where the only sounds are their combined breathing and the distant noises of muffled conversation and footsteps, and, after a few almost unbearable moments, Marisol is just about to stand up to walk away from this room as swiftly as possible but then Maritza releases a low chuckle that sends a shiver down her spine and makes all of her muscles freeze up.

“You look like it’s almost your turn to have an attack, flaca,” she says, in a way that’s almost teasing. “Breathe. Yeah, mami?”

Marisol’s eyes come up again, and, when they meet Maritza’s, the breath in her lungs is gone for a reason that’s entirely different than her anxiety.

Maritza raises her eyebrows and tilts her head forward a little.

“Yeah? You good?”

Marisol nods.

“Yeah. You?”

Maritza looks at her tiredly, blinks sluggishly but allows a slow smile to lift her lips up a little.

“Yeah,” she breathes out. “I think I am.”

Marisol finds herself smiling then too.

—

“I’m gonna fucking kill you, Flaca!”

She turns her head some.

“I can’t believe you used my shampoo without asking, you perra!”

Flaca laughs as Maritza stands at the edge of her bed, her hands on her hips and a pout on her lips.

“Hey, I think that it’s completely fair, seeing as I let you use my shower shoes a few weeks back when that new bitch stole yours, and also seeing as I was the one that had to fight her to get them back.”

Maritza’s arms move to cross over themselves, and even as she tilts her head to concede that Flaca makes a good point, the downturn to her lips stays.

And, so, of course, since Flaca can’t stand the sight of that, she sighs before sitting up in her bed to make room for the other woman.

“Okay, fine, I’m sorry. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Maritza tilts her chin up, shuts her eyes; Always with the dramatics.

“Ay Dios mío. I’ll buy you a snickers from commissary next turn, yeah?”

Maritza’s eyes connect with hers again, a smile stretches her lips, Flaca can’t remember how to breathe for a moment.

“Okay,” the woman answers happily, too easily.

Flaca’s eyebrows furrow. A few seconds pass, and then her face slackens with realization.

“Oh, you perra. You just played the fuck out of me!”

Maritza laughs, melodically, and she jumps onto Flaca’s bed to sit beside her best friend.

“Yep,” she replies, popping the ‘p’ for effect.

Now it’s Flaca’s turn to glower.

“Oh, don’t act like you haven’t done that to me before,” Maritza says matter-of-factly. “Remember the reason you got that mirror? The one that helps you ‘put your eyeliner on more accurately?’”

Flaca sighs slowly through her nose.

“Fine. Touché.”

Maritza just grins at her before leaning her head on her shoulder.

She reaches down to entwine their fingers, and Flaca’s stomach floods with the familiar warmth it always does when Maritza is around.

“You know you love me, Flac.”

Flaca tries to grumble around the sudden butterflies in her stomach, around the tingles in her fingertips and the lump in her throat.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t push it anymore though. One day I might just decide I’ve had enough.”

Maritza scoffs.

“Oh, please. Like you could ever quit me.” Her head rolls a little more, onto Flaca’s chest, so that she can look up at the other woman. “Face it, Flac. We’re together for life. This is it.”

Flaca connects their gazes, albeit at an awkward angle given their positions, and the air in her lungs evaporates, as it always does.

She lets her eyes flit back and forth between Maritza’s own, across all of her perfectly sculpted features, down to her lips and then back up again.

“Yeah,” she breathes out. “Unfortunately.”

Maritza smacks at her arm lightly, but they both have smiles on their faces so there’s no real force to it.

“Whatever, tonta. Once again, you know you love me.”

Flaca lets her eyes flutter shut as she tilts her head back to rest against the wall; She sighs again, long and suffering.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

Maritza giggles out an “I know you do. It’s okay. If I still had a heart, I’d love you too,” and Flaca feels warm.

So, maybe prison wasn’t the end of the world after all.


	2. Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Flaritza, reuniting after they've been separated. Please and thank you."
> 
> Oh man oh boy do we love pain, huh? 
> 
> Here we go.
> 
> This also became a lot longer than planned, but, you know, it happens. 
> 
> Also, if you really wanna suffer, listen to "Can You Hold Me" by NF feat. Britt Nicole. You're welcome but also I'm sorry?
> 
> I hope you enjoy! Thank you for the prompt!

 

_Three months._

That’s how long it’s been since the riot at Litchfield Penitentiary. 

_Twelve weeks._

That’s how long Maritza’s been held at Stangley Penitentiary. 

_Ninety-three days._

That’s how long Maritza’s been away from Flaca Gonzales. 

_Three months. Twelve weeks. Ninety-three days._

Three months–or, to some, twelve weeks, or, to others, ninety-three days–might not seem that long in the grand scheme of things. 

In fact, in the reality that the world has been turning and evolving for billions of years, three months is the blink of a hurricane’s eye; It’s a pretty insignificant amount of time, if Maritza’s being honest.

But, if Maritza is continuing her honesty, time is a socially constructed concept, and, so, really, three months can be three years if she wants it to be.

And, to her, three years seems more realistic anyways.

Because each second that ticks by, every minute that passes, all the hours, that she knows she’ll never get back, drag on for almost unbearably slow stretches of time.

She feels as if she’s just floating through the days, existing only physically, in spaces that seem too big for her now that she doesn’t have someone there to occupy them with her.

She feels as if  _three months_  is the most significant insignificant span of time she’s ever endured, and that’s because she’s had to endure it all  _alone_.

She’s had to endure one month of solitary and two months of clean-up duties in this godforsaken prison without Flaca–without her best friend, her soulmate, her everything—and she swears that if she has to see these people, breathe this air, smell these smells, for one more moment, she’s going to scream, or hit someone, again.

Because that’s  _all_  she wants to do lately is scream, or hit  _someone_ ,  _something_ ,  _anything_.

Because she’s just so  _angry_  these days.

She’s so angry, because they all deserve  _better_.

Taystee’s girl, Poussey, deserves to still be breathing; She deserves to be remembered.

Diaz doesn’t deserve the backlash she’s going to get for shooting that creepy fucker, Humps.

Gloria deserves to see her injured son, and Maria deserves to see her baby girl more often than she’ll start to change shoe sizes.

 _Every single inmate_  of Litchfield—yes, even the meth-heads—deserves better than they were given, and Maritza thinks that it’s all so  _fucked up_  that she can always just  _feel_  her anger bubbling beneath her skin, vibrating through her nerves, boiling in her blood.

Which is a stark contrast to how she had been when the riot first started, when she had first gotten to this new prison.

Because when the riot started, she’d been so caught up in the new freedom, the freedom to just be, to just live, that she hadn’t really focused on getting justice for Poussey, for all of them.

She had been so caught up in how it felt to feel freedom again, in how it felt to get a taste of what a life outside could be like.

She had been so caught up in the way that Flaca’s arms felt around her when they slept, in how warm Flaca’s fingertips felt against the insides of her wrists, in how soft their life could be if they were allowed to live in a place that wasn’t so hardened.

She hadn’t been focused on getting justice or better conditions; She assumed that the others would do that for her.

And they had tried, but then the riot ended, and they had nothing.

She had felt freedom briefly, but then the riot ended, and Flaca was ripped away from her, and  _she_  had nothing.

And Maritza had never had nothing before, because even when she didn’t have anything, she had Flaca; And Flaca was  _never_  nothing.

Flaca was everything— _her_  everything.

Flaca was, is, and always will be Maritza’s everything, but Flaca’s gone, and Maritza still can’t seem to breathe under the weight of a loss so big, a loss so real and crushing.

And it’s funny, in a humorless sort of way, because when she had first been brought to Stangley Penitentiary, which is at least in the same state as Litchfield, she had been kind of calm, in that numb sort of way that settles into your bones after you’ve cried all of your emotions out.

The heart-shattering sight of Flaca crying, crying out for her, had been replaying constantly in her mind, and the tears in her eyes had long since dried, for the sole reason that her body couldn’t produce any more of them.

Her eyes were still burning, and she had just been so  _tired_ , and  _so_  beaten down, that when they had stuck her, along with everyone else from Litchfield that came with her, into solitary immediately upon arrival, she had just been thankful to get some sort of bed to lie upon.

Her head had hit the pillow, and her red eyelids had slid closed, and she was out like a light, like the light she had lost just hours before when she lost Flaca.

It was only when she was still in solitary days later—what  _had to be_  days later—that she started to feel that anger, that indignance, rise within her, because she  _knew_  that the only reason she was still in there was because  _they_   _didn’t_   _know_  what to do with her; They didn’t know what to do with  _any_  of the Litchfield rioters.

Because the inmates of Litchfield were risk factors, dangerous and in need of direction again, and no one had the energy to really deal with them at first.

So, they apparently thought that they might as well kill two birds with one stone by sticking them in the SHU; It served as punishment and a temporary placeholder for them as they figured out a plan.

But that punishment, that _temporary_ placeholder, lasted a whole month before they moved all of them into the normal facilities.

That punishment, that temporary placeholder, served as the perfect place for Maritza to think about everything that had happened.

And it was that time to think that made her almost volatile.

To the point where, now, every day, she feels like she’s going to explode if something doesn’t change.

To the point where, every day, she feels like she gets closer and closer to going over the edge of her sanity.

To the point where it might only take one word, one look, one action, to have her losing all of her fabricated cool and unleashing all of the pain and sorrow and anger that she has built up inside her—the same pain and sorrow and anger that everyone from Litchfield has inside them.

She’s so close, and yet, of course, none of this shows on the outside.

No, on the outside, she simply goes about her routine, in a strange state of calm that would honestly scare her if she wasn't so numb now.

She sits with the rest of the Litchfield inmates at mealtimes, because they’re her people, but she doesn’t speak to them.

She doesn’t speak to anyone anymore, and, thankfully, no one speaks to her; The reputation they’ve all received is enough to scare the majority of the population into avoiding them and have the rest of the population respect them.

It’s nice, in a way, to not be seen at this prison as one of the “dumb” Latinas. It’s nice to be seen as intimidating and mysterious.

It’s just not as nice as being with Flaca.

Because Maritza would take the reputation of someone air-headed and unimpressive any day over one of mystery and intimidation if it meant that she got to be by Flaca’s side again.

Because Maritza would do _anything_ to see Flaca again, in a place different from her dreams.

Because it’s not _right_ that they’re separated. They had been together so long, that everything they did was in sync. They were fine-tuned and perfect in the way they moved as one, moved around one another. They could each understand what the other needed without even having to say anything.

They were meant to be; Maritza knew that they were.

Maritza knew that Flaca was the other half—the better half—to her whole. Maritza knew that Flaca was the person that the universe decided she could be blessed with, and, for whatever reason that was, she had sworn to never question it, to never take it for granted.

But she had. She _had_ taken it for granted.

She had gotten too used to being around the other woman. She had forgotten to thank her lucky stars every day as promised, and so she lost her.

She lost her, and, so, now, as she mindlessly goes about her days, she feels unbalanced, off-kilter.

Because how is she supposed to remain upright and steady if the center of her universe has been taken away from her?

How is she supposed to continue to let her world turn when the source of light and warmth in her life is gone?

She’s not, is the conclusion she came to a long time ago, somewhere in between hours two hundred and two hundred and one of solitary confinement.

She’s not, and so she has no more fight left in her, even as she has so much fire burning her up from the inside out.

She has no more fight left, no more curiosity or care, and so when some of her new COs come to fetch her, take her through processing, put her on a bus, she doesn’t question it.

She doesn’t look around at the people on the bus enough to notice that it’s only her fellow former Litchfield residents accompanying her on the journey, but even if she did, she would’ve just thought they were all headed to trial with her.

So, for most of the journey she sleeps, as horribly as she’s become accustomed to without the sounds of Flaca’s steady breathing next to her, and once she’s awake once more, she just stares unseeingly ahead of her.

“Hey,” comes a voice from her right at some point, that sounds too directly directed at her to ignore. She blinks harshly, waits for the sting in her eyes to dissipate, and then meets the gaze of the person sitting on the seat right next to her, across the aisle. “Do you think we’re headed home?”

Her eyebrows furrow, just slightly enough to show a reaction, and then she shakes her head a little to show her confusion.

“Well, you know, because we’re taking the same route that we took when we left Litchfield.”

Her eyes move from the older lady’s face to the window behind her, but all she sees is the green blur of the trees they’re passing.

She cocks her head to the side some as she meets the woman’s gaze.

“Oh, I have an eidetic memory, and I’m positive that this is the same highway.”

Maritza’s heart starts to beat at a quicker rate, at a rate it hasn’t in a long time.

She swallows thickly.

“Maybe they really are taking us back. You know, once those videos got out of how we get treated, the public started to become more invested in our rights and all. Maybe they did raise some hell for us.”

Maritza nods in a quick up and down motion before turning back to sit in her seat more properly.

She lets her gaze drift to the window on her left, while simultaneously letting it ignore the sleeping inmate beside her, and she watches as the green continues to fly past them—or technically as they continue to fly past the green.

Her mind has begun to pick up speed just as the bus has; It’s as if, with this one possibility of real change, the dormant areas of her mind, the ones containing real feeling and processing, are beginning to wake up.

The cogs are starting to turn again, and as they creak back to action, the ringing in her ears picks up too.

Her right leg starts to bounce jerkily, just as it always does when she’s anxious, and, as the adrenaline coursing so suddenly through her veins makes her lightheaded, her fingers begin to grasp at one another in a desperate attempt to feel grounded to something.

Because, Litchfield… They might _actually_ be going back to Litchfield.

The thought almost brings a smile to her face, it makes some of the muscles in her lips twitch upwards just barely, and that in itself is such a strange feeling of familiarity that it causes her anxiety to spike.

And, man, was she really _not_ _prepared_ for the sudden return of her senses on this bus ride.

She sighs, keeps her eyes focused on the outside, and waits until the scenery changes.

She waits, and waits, and waits, and, honestly, it’s truly an indeterminable amount of time that passes before she sees anything other than the trees.

But as soon as she does, she’s sitting up straighter in her seat.

“Hey!” someone further towards the front of the bus shouts. “Is that Litchfield?”

The people start to become more restless, roused from their still mindlessness.

“It is!” someone else shouts.

The voices pick up, people try to stand to get a better view.

“Stay seated, inmates!” one of the guards yells out, his voice booming but not booming enough to kill the sudden excitement in the air.

Maritza is finding it hard to breathe, but for reasons entirely different than the past three months.

The bus starts to slow, and the noise is almost deafening.

“Inmates! Sit down!”

They do so, but just barely; They’ve learned the lesson to not push their luck when told to do something, when something really good seems to be happening.

“Now, everyone stay seated until you’re given further instructions.”

Maritza makes eye contact with a few people as a few minutes pass, and every single shared stare seems to hold that same anticipatory breathlessness.

“Okay, everyone step off of the bus in a single file line.”

As Maritza stands, her legs feel weak beneath her.

Her knees feel unstable, and her muscles feel unreliable.

They take them into the building for processing, and the routine is so familiar, and yet so foreign, all at once, that, for the whole time she’s doing what she’s told, her mind is reeling and her senses are almost in overload.

It’s not even until she’s given her bedding and told to head back to the bus that it starts to feel real.

It’s not until she sees Litchfield’s familiar front gates come into view that she truly allows that bubble of hope to rise within her chest, that she allows that hope to spread through her and warm her from the inside out.

Because this is her place, and even though so much bad happened here, she never wants to see the inside of another facility ever again.

She knows this for sure, when she walks through the doors, and a wave of nostalgia hits her chest so solidly that she almost staggers backwards.

She knows this for sure, because even though she can tell it’s been newly renovated, the place still smells like home—her home, their home, the place she _knows_.

“Okay, inmates!” a CO she doesn’t, thankfully, recognize calls out. “If you are a returning inmate, you will be bunking in the same dorms as you have in the past, so please move to line up with the officer you see holding a sign with your dorm’s letter. If you are a new inmate, please move to the side so that we can get you assigned—.”

Maritza blocks out the rest of the guy’s words as she does as instructed, and then she follows the lady CO that was holding up her letter.

With each new step along the familiar route to her old dorm, her heart pounds harder against the inside of her throat.

“You alright there, Ramos?” one of the girls asks as they round a corner. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

She nods slightly, and then clenches her jaw and tries to shift her face into something steelier.

She grips her bedding tighter as her eyes search around for a sign—any sign—of her family, but she doesn’t find what she’s looking for.

The halls are empty of anyone but the newly returning inmates, so Maritza doesn’t know if they’re back yet or not.

She _actually_ doesn’t even know what happened to them.

Because, of course, it was _just_ her luck that none of her girls from Spanish Harlem were on the same bus as her.

They’re suddenly stopping.

“Alright. You all know which cube you’ve been assigned to, I’m assuming. Put your things down, and then stand at the entrances to them.”

Maritza walks with bated breath to her and Flaca’s old cube, and when she turns the corner into it, she feels tears come up to prick at her eyes.

Because, even though Flaca may not be sitting there in her bed, which is now a single once more, her stuff is; Maritza could recognize the way that the pillow is folded atop itself anywhere.

She lets out a slow exhale as she tries to blink away her emotion, and she walks over to set her things down swiftly before moving to stand at the entrance like she was told.

Only a few more moments pass before every one of the inmates is standing and awaiting further instruction, and Maritza can feel her palms begin to sweat.

“You will be going through orientation tomorrow morning in the auditorium. Right now, the rest of the inmates are participating in free time outside, so that we are able to get you all settled. You may go join them for the next hour, and then dinner will be served.”

The woman pauses just slightly, and to almost everyone’s surprise, she smiles at them.

“Welcome home, ladies.”

A few people let out whoops of actual happiness at that, and, this time, Maritza can’t help it when her instinct is to grin.

Her lips stretch into a real, genuine smile, and even though the action hurts a little, because the muscles of her face haven’t performed it in so long, she doesn’t care, because the adrenaline and excitement of this moment is just too much to contain.

She then starts to move just as everyone else does, but, honestly, getting through the hallways and to the back door that leads to the rec yard is a complete blur.

She doesn’t even realize she’s _made_ _it_ outside until she feels the sun hit her skin and temporarily blind her vision.

She swallows thickly and brings a subtly shaking hand up to shade her eyes as she blinks hurriedly. She then pivots on her heels as she tries to hear over the calls and shouts of everyone being reunited around her, over the ringing in her ears, over her pulse’s rushing within her ears.

Her eyes jump from face to face, hug to hug, smile to smile, in search of the one face, the one smile, the one hug she needs the most.

A few fruitless moments pass, and then her feet begin to carry her further into the yard clumsily.

She knocks into some people, but she can’t bring herself to say sorry, because, suddenly, she’s standing in the middle of the crowd, feeling as if she’s suffocating. Because she can’t see Flaca anywhere, and everyone is so close to her that the edges of her vision are starting to become a little less defined with each second that her panic rises.

She inhales a shuddering breath, tries to release it in a manner that’s more controlled than she feels, because if she doesn’t get a grip on her claustrophobia, she’s going to pass out.

But even then, it’s not just her claustrophobia that’s making the air too thick, because her mind is racing and running rampant with all sorts of doubts.

The voices around her start to become more muffled.

Because what if Flaca isn’t actually here? What if the universe decided that she didn’t deserve Flaca anymore? What if she really _is_ going to be alone for the rest of her sentence?

_What if, what if, what if?_

“Maritza!”

Her breath hitches in the back of her throat, and she whirls around so quickly that she nearly falls over.

Her world zones back in, and she releases a sob of pure relief as glistening brown eyes meet her own from across the space between them.

Maritza’s heart picks up its pace, it pushes her, propels her, to move forward to the source of its life, and so then she’s pushing through the crowd before her brain can really even catch up with her.

There’s a few still moments where she’s just careening through nothingness, and then strong arms envelop her shaking body and she’s being held closer than she ever thought possible.

Flaca’s hands come up to cradle the back of her head and neck, respectively, as she whispers soft words of reassurance and love into Maritza’s ear with a voice that wobbles with emotion, and Maritza just clutches to the back of the woman’s shirt with trembling fingers before burying her face into her shoulder so that no one else can see the dampness of her cheeks.

The anger in her chest, that’s been so close to boiling over, starts to cool; The tenseness in her muscles seeps away from her, her body almost deflates in Flaca’s arms.

“You’re okay,” Flaca whispers as she pulls back. Her eyes search Maritza’s face as if she’s looking at the most beautiful thing to ever grace the Earth. “You’re okay.”

Maritza nods, out of pure instinct to reassure and rid Flaca of all her doubts. She swallows, with just a little difficulty, around the lump in her throat, and she clears her throat.

“I’m okay,” she replies, hoarse and a little haggard sounding.

Flaca’s eyebrows immediately furrow over her gaze, deep and worried, as she hears Maritza speak. Her hands move up, her fingers frame the contours and edges of Maritza’s face, her eyes caress the lines and curves of her cheeks gently.

“ _Are you_ okay?”

Maritza pauses. She lets herself take everything in.

She lets her eyes flit between all of Flaca’s features. The low and worried crease of her eyebrows, the loving and present shine of her eyes, the shadows cast by her eyelashes upon her cheekbones, the tilt of her lips as she frowns just lightly.

She lets herself feel the touch of Flaca’s hands upon her skin again, warm and grounding and real, _so_ _real_ after _so_ _long_ of the ghost of the feeling haunting her.

She lets herself revel in the way Flaca’s body fits against hers, in the way the sun behind the woman almost makes a halo of light around her head, in the way the calm she’s so been desiring finally starts to settle into her aching bones.

And then, she smiles.

“Yeah,” she breathes out. “I’m okay. I wasn’t before, but I am now.”

Flaca searches her facial expression, she sees tired eyes and sunken cheeks that match her own, and she understands; _Of_ _course_ she understands.

So, she sighs slowly, the tension in her own body drains some.

She leans down, and she presses their foreheads together.

Maritza’s eyelids flutter shut.

“I missed you.”

Maritza’s grip around Flaca’s waist tightens ever so slightly.

“I missed you too,” she whispers, almost too quietly to hear.

Flaca pulls back again, and Maritza’s eyes open to see Flaca’s own looking at her with the most vulnerability she’s ever known a person to have.

A few seconds pass, where they’re both stuck in the same space together; The thumbs on Maritza’s cheekbones wipe away a little of the moisture there.

“I love you,” Flaca suddenly says, as if those words have been on the tip of her tongue since the day they’d met. “I love you too, and I’m sorry I didn’t say it when you did, because you deserved to hear it. You deserve to hear those words every day, and I will tell you for every single day that you let me.”

Maritza feels another sob push at her lips, and since she doesn’t fight this one, it comes out more softly, less painfully, than the last one. Flaca’s fingers continue to stroke lightly across her skin.

“I’m sorry,” the taller woman says again, her chin wobbling, her voice wavering. “I’m so sorry, because those words helped me get through every single day, and the fact that you didn’t have them too tears me up inside.”

“Shh,” Maritza soothes softly, shaking her head just a little. “Don’t apologize. It’s okay. We’re okay.”

Flaca sighs.

“I wasn’t brave enough to say them,” she continues gently. “I thought that if I said them, if I admitted it to myself and to you and to the whole world, then the loss would somehow be bigger, or—or more painful. I thought that if I admitted to myself that I loved you, right before I didn’t have you with me, it would completely break me.” Flaca shakes her own head then, and she swallows thickly. “But I was wrong, because not having you with me broke me anyway, and so I should’ve told you then.”

Maritza shakes her head again, but she doesn’t get to say anything.

“But I didn’t. So, I’m telling you now. I love you, Maritza. I don’t ever want you to go another day without knowing that.”

Maritza’s next smile is small and watery. Her eyes burn a little against her tears, but it’s in a good way, a relieving way.

Her hands come up to cup Flaca’s face within them.

“I knew, Flaca,” she says. “I’ve always known.” She sniffs. “We’re Flaritza, after all. We can practically read each other’s minds.”

Flaca chuckles lowly, and Maritza shivers against the impacts of the soundwaves against her spine.

“Yeah. Team Flaritza forever, right?”

Maritza’s grin widens.

“You got it, baby.”

When Flaca leans down to connect their lips, Maritza swears that she won’t ever, _ever_ take this for granted again, and she swears that she won’t ever let them be separated; For as long as she can, she’s going to fight for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My tumblr is Kimnihart if you wish to send prompts there.
> 
> Always feel free to comment your prompts as well.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is flairfatale if you wish to send prompts there.
> 
> Always feel free to comment your prompts as well.


End file.
